June 9: Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball, The Newsroom, and a number of other intelligent, ideologically liberal films, television shows, and plays, was born in Manhattan on this date in 1961. Sorkin’s first major success as a writer was with A Few Good Men, a play about abuse within the U.S. Marine Corps, which was made into a movie in 1992. His career never flagged after that, but it was his creation of The West Wing, which won nine Emmys in its debut season in 1997, that made his name into a household word and his style of rapid-fire dialogue by busy, moving-through-the-halls characters into a television trope. Sorkin has collaborated frequently with Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and director Thomas Schlamme, and is widely seen as Hollywood’s most politically astute, culturally literate, and politically progressive writer. His screenplay about the founding of Facebook, The Social Network, won an Academy Award in 2010.

“I must tell you, I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I’m writing episode seven now and couldn’t tell you what happens in episode eight.”